RAVENSWOOD MANOR
LIST PRICE: $1.35 million
SALE PRICE: $1.23 million

Just three days before selling his pioneering “microlocal” online news site, Adrian Holovaty bought a house beside the Chicago River’s North Branch in Ravenswood Manor.

Holovaty’s two-year-old Everyblock.com, which pulls together news items tailored locally to any address in Chicago (but not yet the suburbs), was funded by a grant from the Knight Foundation, an offshoot of the old Knight-Ridder newspaper chain, until June 30th. In mid-August, Everyblock.com announced that it had been purchased by MSNBC.com, although terms of the sale were not disclosed. Holovaty, who declined to comment for this article, remains at the helm of Everyblock.com.

Holovaty and his wife, Sara, bought a four-bedroom, blond brick two-story built in 1924, with a crenelated top and brick pilasters framing the main front windows. While it resembles a traditional two-flat, it’s a single-family home. Being situated at the end of a block that, like several others in the neighborhood, dead-ends at the North Branch gives this home an extrawide lot—37 feet, compared with the 25-foot standard—the east side of which overlooks the tree-lined waterway.

According to the real-estate agent’s listing sheet for the house, it was “beautifully and lovingly rehabbed” in the 11 years since the seller bought the house for, according to the Cook County Recorder of Deeds, $545,000.

Send tips about high-end home sales to dennis@rodkin.com.

Photograph: Todd Urban